In the Media

In his film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore explored the complex ties between Bush administration officials and associates, the Saudi Royal family, and those believed to have carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Today, Moore is backing former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham’s call for President Obama to reopen the investigation into 9/11 after new information emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. “There are many unanswered questions and they should be answered,” Moore says. He also was targeted by his critics for this film. Moore talks about how the Bush administration worried the movie would hurt Bush’s re-election chances, and how he found out that he ranked second behind then-President Bush on the number of discovered plots to attack him. [includes rush transcript]

(Ed note: Sorry, readers–I don’t know of a way to “unembed” the ad from that video… ugh!)

In tonight’s Rewrite, Lawrence told you we would give you access to the full clips of this weekend’s clash between police officers and Wall Street protesters. The full versions of the clips we showed you tonight are below – but a warning… there is some graphic language used in these videos that you did not hear on our broadcast.

Wow … BRAVO Mr. O’Donnell!
America… “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” … yeah…
Update1: See Related story from RawStory.com below. Pepper-spraying cop’s history of abuse…
Update2: Looks promising (not…): NYPD to investigate Tony Bologna…. “I don’t know what precipitated that specific incident,” [police commissioner] Kelly said, claiming the protesters were engaged in “tumultuous conduct” and “intent on blocking traffic.” [Ed. note: We recommend Mr. Kelly review the video, as the rest of the world is doing, and note these individuals were certainly not engaged in either of his accusations.]

A former FBI agent has told the BBC that he is being prevented from telling the truth about the events of 9/11 and what has happened since.

Ali Soufan alleges that crucial intelligence was not passed on from the CIA before the attacks in 2001.

He has written a book detailing some of his claims and has been speaking to the BBC’s Security Correspondent Gordon Corera in his first on camera interview on the subject.

In response to the allegations in this report the CIA issued a statement to the BBC that said: “Any suggestion that the CIA purposely refused to share critical lead information on the 9/11 plots with the FBI is baseless.”

“The suggestion that the Central Intelligence Agency has requested redactions on this publication because it does not like the content is ridiculous.”

The CIA decline to comment on the record about the accusations regarding waterboarding and interrogation.

The former co-chair of a Congressional inquiry after the September 11, 2001
attacks called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation following
a news report linking the hijackers to a Saudi Arabian couple who lived in Florida.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham said he has no reason to doubt the news report,
which said the Saudi Arabian couple abruptly abandoned their luxury home in
Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind a full refrigerator, clothes,
furnishings and a new car in the driveway.

The report was published by BrowardBulldog.org., a nonprofit Internet news
site and was simultaneously published on the news website of the Miami Herald.

If true, it reveals another Saudi terrorism connection that was never disclosed
by the FBI to the public or to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee
investigating the attacks, said Graham, who was co-chair of the committee.

The FBI office in Tampa issued a statement on Monday saying the Sarasota case
was one of many leads that "were resolved and determined not to be related
to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Graham called the Sarasota case "eerily similar" to the FBI’s failure
to tell the intelligence committee about a former Saudi civil servant, Omar
al-Bayoumi, who supported two hijackers while they were living in San Diego.
Graham said an investigator for his committee independently unearthed the information
about al-Bayoumi.

"Why did the U.S. government go to such lengths to cover up the Saudi
involvement?" Graham said.…

A congresswoman demanded details be revealed to the public about FBI
investigation into Saudi family with ties to hijackers in Sarasota.
By Dan Christensen
Special to The Miami Herald

A decade after the FBI found ties between a Saudi family living quietly near Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers, a Florida Democratic congresswoman is calling on the House Intelligence Committee to investigate whether agents revealed their findings to Congress.

Kathy Castor said she was troubled over reports that federal agents discovered a luxury home where the family was living was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers and phone calls were linked between the home and the terrorists, but Congress was not told of the discovery.

The family abruptly left the home less than two weeks before the attacks, leaving a new car in the driveway, a refrigerator stuffed with food, toys in the pool — and an open safe in the master bedroom, according to administrators at the development.

“One of the great criticisms of the pre-9/11 intelligence operations,” Castor wrote in her letter on Monday to the committee’s two senior members, “was the lack of cooperation and information sharing among agencies.”

The dispute over what Congress knew about the case emerged last week after The Miami Herald reported about the little known FBI investigation at the upscale development on Florida’s west coast.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into the deadly hijackings, said he was never told about the case, while… Continue reading →

For the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the mainstream media has offered
an unprecedented level of apparent bias against reasonable people invested in
justice for the victims of 9/11. The majority of articles below imply that “truthers”
are driven by a fear of chaos and uncertainty to draw comfort from misdirected
rage. Most of the articles make sweeping generalization about those involved
while others are outright insulting.

The Setup: “The world is awash in conspiracy theories. [“9/11 “truther”
beliefs”] […] The “birther” conspiracy theorists […]
Obama is a secret Muslim intent on instituting Sharia Law […] the president
blew up the Deepwater Horizon […] Osama bin Laden is not dead […]
the Holocaust never happened […] the world is run by the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Freemasons or the Federal Reserve. The list sprawls on.”

The Premise: “When Republicans are in power, right-leaning villains such
as big business dominate conspiracy theorizing. When Democrats are in power,
left-leaning villains such as socialists become the top peril.”

Misdirection: “Although conspiracy theories have anti-democratic aspects, in
this respect they are very fair: All of us get to play the villain eventually.”

The Setup: “Defying countless official and non-governmental enquiries,
media reporting, and often common sense, a significant number of people fervently
disbelieve that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda sent 19 hijackers to execute
the September 11, 2001 massacre.…

By Corey Kilgannon
September 9, 2011City Room Blog at NewYorkTimes/Region

Photo credit: Benjamin Norman for The New York Times. A meeting of people at a cafe in Greenwich Village on Thursday night of people who have alternate views of what happened
on 9/11.

“No bullhorning during the memorial.”

That’s always been the rule of thumb among “truther” demonstrators
at ground zero on Sept. 11, out of respect for relatives of victims of the terror
attack, said Mike Skuthan, 32, a Web designer from Long Island who attends the
demonstrations every year.

But after this Sunday’s memorial, Mr. Skuthan said, the bullhorns and
signs will again be brought out and the groups will walk from one location to
another in Manhattan chanting their message and engaging passers-by to help
them call for a new investigation into the attacks.

“You have the usual chants — ‘9-11 Truth Ends Wars,’
or ‘Two planes, three buildings,’ ” Mr. Skuthan said. “The
popular one this year will probably be, ‘Ten years, no justice.’
“

Members of the so-called 9-11 Truth movement range from extreme conspiracy
theorists who believe that the Bush administration engineered the attacks to
consolidate power, roll back civil liberties and help oil mogul friends. But
then there are more moderate factions that simply insist that top government
officials know more about the attacks than they have acknowledged, and then
used then used the attacks as a pretext for invading Iraq. A large percentage
of activists outline — often in great detail… Continue reading →

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ten years after al Qaeda’s attack on the United States,
the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission’s investigative records remain sealed
at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed
the archives to make most of the material public in 2009, Reuters has learned.

The National Archives’ failure to release the material presents a hurdle for
historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic events in modern
American history.

The 575 cubic feet of records were in large part the basis for the commission’s
public report, issued July 22, 2004. The commission, formally known as the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was established by Congress
in late 2002 to investigate the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the pre-attack
effectiveness of intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
and the government’s emergency response.

In a Reuters interview this week, Matt Fulgham, assistant director of the archives’
center for legislative affairs which has oversight of the commission documents,
said that more than a third of the material has been reviewed for possible release.
But many of those documents have been withheld or heavily redacted, and the
released material includes documents that already were in the public domain,
such as press articles.

Commission items still not public include a 30-page summary of an April 29,
2004 interview by all… Continue reading →

September 7, 2011New York Times
Produced By MATT ERICSON, RUNE MADSEN, EMILY S. RUEB and JEREMY WHITE

A selection of audio recordings from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.),
North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) and American Airlines from
the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The recordings, some of which have been published
previously, are being released in a multimedia report originally intended to
be part of the Sept. 11 Commission’s 2004 report.

Audio files were provided by John J. Farmer Jr., the Dean of Rutgers Law School-Newark
and a senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission. Transcripts were edited from text
provided by Miles L. Kara, Sr., a professional staff member of the 9/11 Commission.
The call from Betty Ong was retrieved from an exhibit presented by the prosecution
in United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui in United States District Court in Alexandria,
Va.

Ed: Interactive audio provided at source, The 9/11 Tapes: The Story in the Air NYTimes.com, with this introduction and caution:
“Select a clip from the menu on the left-hand side. The transcript will automatically scroll as the audio is played. Note: Some audio contains explicit language and disturbing content.”

Excerpt:

10:09 AM1 minute, 57 seconds – The fighter pilots
do not know if they have permission to shoot down planes. A commander tells
them they do not. (Warning: profanity at the end of the clip)

Nearly 10 years on, many still argue who was really behind the 9/11 attacks….Ben Fordham investigates.

This excellent debate can be heard at 2GB, Sydney’s number 1 rated talk station which has been broadcasting for over 80 years, part of Macquarie Radio Network, hosted by 2GB’s show, ” The Lounge “, or via upload to YouTube here:

Andreas von Bulow used to be a German cabinet minister and member of parliament for the Social Democrats. Now he is a best-selling author who writes books about 9/11 conspiracy theories. His former colleagues no longer want anything to do with him.

Andreas von Bulow says he’s never feared for his life. This is despite the fact that he harbors suspicions that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not the work of 19 “suicide Muslims,” as he calls them, but rather an ingenious, cold-blooded operation in psychological warfare organized by the United States itself; and despite the fact that he has published this view in book form.

Bulow doesn’t commit himself definitively to the position, but he feels fairly certain that either the Bush administration or other, far more powerful groups operating behind the scenes allowed more than 3,000 people to die in order to construct an unassailable argument supporting geopolitically desirable military operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are astonishing theories on the part of a former German government minister, one who spent 25 years representing the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag. He’s not saying his theories necessarily represent what really happened, Bulow explains, he’s simply posing questions. “This is just another way of thinking,” he says. But, the former minister adds, it’s a way of thinking that appears… Continue reading →

IF YOU THINK that on the 10th anniversary you know the whole story of 9/11 – and here I’m addressing conspiracy-minded “truthers” and the 13 percent who approved of the job Dick Cheney did as vice president – actually, you don’t.

Time has upheld the broad story line of how hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden hijacked four planes and killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 – claims about holograms being used to attack buildings instead of jetliners notwithstanding. At the same time, the dictum of famed investigative reporter I.F. Stone about all governments – i.e., they lie – is no less true about 9/11 than any other event.

Here are 10 questions about 9/11 that remain unanswered.

1. Did the CIA cover up its advance knowledge of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers?

Richard Clarke, the national counterterrorism czar on 9/11, thinks so. In an interview for an upcoming radio documentary, Clarke claimed that top-level CIA officials deliberately withheld from the White House and the FBI knowledge as early as 2000 that two al Qaeda members – Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar – were living in San Diego.

The former anti-terror chief said he believes that the CIA kept the info under wraps because it wanted to recruit the two Saudis to serve as double agents within bin Laden’s organization. Instead, the two terrorists ended up hijackers on American Flight 77. George Tenet, who was CIA director, claims that Clarke… Continue reading →

If you thought the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 would be an endless barrage of
media coverage rehashing the official story and taking occasional swipes at
the 9/11 truth movement with one-sided reporting, think again.

Well, if you live in Europe, that is.

This coming Sunday, September 4, three major European channels will air in-
depth stories on the Remember Building 7 campaign. M6, among France’s
largest channels, will show a 90-minute documentary about various 9/11 family
and first responder groups, a significant portion of which will cover Remember
Building 7 (click here to see the trailer). In the same vein, RAI 3, Italy’s
BBC, will show a feature length documentary that devotes significant time to
Remember Building 7. And RTL, one of Germany’s largest channels, will
show a Spiegel TV special about Remember Building 7 and the 9/11 truth movement.

That is just the beginning. Next week more stories will follow. When all is
said and done, tens of millions of Europeans will learn about Building 7 during
the 10th Anniversary.

With the 10th Anniversary Campaign now in high gear, this coverage comes at
exactly the right time to help the campaign reach $1 million by September 11.

Meanwhile, in the US and UK, journalists are having a tougher time being journalists,
and they just don’t seem to get that shamelessly overt bias isn’t
that good at persuading viewers (unless it’s on FOX News).…

Breathlessly, six members of Congress have requested that the FBI investigate the “outrageous” allegations that News Corp might have hacked into the cell phones of 9/11 victims and their families. Lickety split, the Justice Department has done so.

First off, does it surprise me that a corporation like News Corp. might try to hack into the information of private citizens for their own financial gain? Nope.

Much like it wouldn’t surprise me if my own government hacked into the private information of its citizens for political gain or… er, I mean, “reasons of national security.” Just ask Dick Cheney and Karl Rove about that.

Of course, any such “accidental netting” on their part would be immediately explained away under the protections of FISA and the Patriot Act, because clearly it would have been necessary “in the ongoing fight against terrorism.”

But truly, I am awestruck when people like Congressman Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee for Homeland Security is so quickly moved to demand an investigation into such vague, seemingly hollow allegations as someone hacking into the cell phones of people like me.

Is this the same Congressman King who when faced with actual hard, incontrovertible facts and figures regarding the vulnerabilities posed by dangerous chemical and water plants across the country remains disinterested? And, I might add firmly on the side of… Continue reading →

There are some crimes so universally offensive that even mentioning the suspected crime has devastating effects. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) raised just such a question yesterday. In a brief press statement, the Senator said:

“The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals – including children – is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics. This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated. I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe.” Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, July 12

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has used voicemail hacking and other forms of privacy intrusion in the United Kingdom as far back as 2002. The goal is to get the most intimate insider information, stay ahead of the news cycle, and beat the competition. Where better to get information than the voicemails and other electronic data belonging to those in the news. The News of the World, Murdoch’s flagship paper, hacked the voicemails of a kidnapped 12 year old, the widows of fallen soldiers, and even the powerful. In 2006, the Murdoch papers invaded the private medical records of former Labour Party leader Gordon Brown.

A July 4 article by Nick Davies of the Guardian ignited the most recent focus on illegal actions by the Murdoch papers with the revelation about the hack of the 12 year old kidnap-murder victim.…

A New York police officer has claimed besieged British tabloid the News of
the World attempted to hack into the voicemails of victims of the 9/11 terror
attacks, as Rupert Murdoch arrived in London for emergency talks aimed at diffusing
the international crisis surrounding his media empire.

Rival red-top newspaper the Mirror reported the officer was contacted by News
of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private
phone records of the dead.

Now working as a private investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted
the victims’ phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received
in the days leading up to the atrocity.

The voicemails would likely include harrowing messages from desperate loved
ones trying to make contact with their relatives caught up in the 2001 terror
strikes on the World Trade Center, in which thousands perished.

A source told the newspaper: “This investigator is used by a lot of journalists
in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’
private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records
showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging
to the victims and their relatives.

“His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into
the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK.
The PI said he had to turn… Continue reading →

Thomas Drake worked for the National Security Agency before he was indicted by it. Drake felt that taxpayer money was being misused on unnecessary intelligence, not the information that would lead to the successful capture of terrorists.

While the government says he betrayed his country, Drake, facing 35 years in prison if convicted, says he only pointed out government mismanagement. Drake was imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917.

“The entire national security establishment — it was a failure, a fundamental systemic breakdown,” Drake told “60 Minutes”‘ Scott Pelley in his first televised interview.

Watch the full interview below, which originally aired on “60 Minutes” on May 22, 2011, embedded courtesy of CBS.

USA Today has posted an online poll asking whether readers think Champion should have dismissed Rashard Mendenhall as their spokesperson. As of last count, 65% of those voting think the company did the right thing. If you have not read this football running back’s Tweets, which initially stirred such “controversy” (read, blather for 24/7 sports “news” and fodder for haters), see this. Mr. Mendenhall’s clarification statement, published on his new blog May 4, is also reposted below.

As a mother of three young athletes myself, with ten more years of athletic equipment purchases in front of me, I can state with certainty I will never buy them another product made by this company and will be writing to let them know they should have been proud to have an intelligent, thinking athlete speaking for them.

I appreciate those of you who have decided to read this letter and attain a greater understanding of my recent twitter posts. I see how they have gotten misconstrued, and wanted to use this outlet as a way to clear up all things that do not truthfully represent myself, what I stand for personally, and any organization that I am a part of.

First, I want people to understand that I am not in support of Bin Laden, or against the USA. I understand how devastating 9/11 was to this country and to the people whose families were… Continue reading →